In June, I had a great opportunity to take my daughter’s class to a contemporary art gallery. For our gallery visit I chose an exhibition called “Transit” by Christoph Steinmeyer.
My idea was to offer an additional art program to already existing art classes in our school, which would involve visits to art institutions, galleries, artists’ studios and to involve children in a dialogue about art. I wanted to show them Berlin’s art scene in order for them to know more about the great city we live in.
I asked myself about what would be the most important piece of information for a kid. And how best to present it to a class of 21 completely different 8-year old children.
I decided to meet with the children first and find out what they already know and think about art. My expectations were greatly exceded in all respects. The children themselves installed a bridge of communication between us and showed enthusiasm and interest. We spoke for an hour in a free and easy atmosphere. Their curiosity erased all of my concerns and made it easy for me to develop a conversation that prepared them to see an art exhibition. It made me also recall the famous words of Picasso:”Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

I also believe that every child is intuitively capable of understanding an abstract language of shapes and colours and that these kind of intuitive connections should be encouraged.

The class’ enthusiasm and interest during our one-hour chat in the class room and during the following hour in the gallery, where children spoke to the gallery owner about the show, showed me that this kind of program is necessary. The idea is simple – to give children access to selected, child-friendly art shows and let them develop their own views, likes and dislikes and most importantly to offer a platform for a dialog between children and artists, art gallerists, curators and collectors and art historians. There are no wrongs and rights in expressing your opinion – it is only a first step to developing your own perception of the world around us.
Why “Art talks…”? I believe that art is one of many important ways to learn about ourselves and the world around us. It is an important tool for a person to reflect on things and to evaluate them.

“Art talks…” create a platform for children where they can see, analyse and think about art relying on their own intuitive reflections on artworks. While concentrating on art and gradually viewing it in an art historical context as well as in the context of the art industry and the city of Berlin.
The purpose of the “Art talks…” is to inspire children to question, to think, to critique, to push ideas further, to consider their own interpretations, to desire to discover – as that will help them to gain confidence that one day their ideas and inventions will become part of larger endeavors that positively impact humanity.
“Art talks…”, in June 2015, conversations with children about art, followed by a visit to a Contemporary Art Gallery, DIEHL CUBE (http://diehl-cube.com/transit/) and a conversation with the owner of the gallery, Mr. Volker Diehl, about art, art gallery, and the artworks presented at the exhibition “Transit”, by Christoph Steinmeyer.
DIEHL CUBE is 24/7, a 7 x 7 x 7 vitrine and laboratory of alchemical presences, containing messages, statements and context-based topics of immediate art.

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the Universe”
Galileo Galilei

In one of her solo shows in the New York-based Zalman Gallery in 2000, Nargis Rakhmanova showed a new series of figurative and abstract paintings called “Crossroads”, in which she unified two classical genres of painting: abstract and figurative. This show presaged the two most important concepts of her future work–energy and matter.

“Crossroads” was soon followed by another figurative series called “Laboratory, Looking for Soul”, which was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings of the human body. The spirit of Leonardo’s quest to find the essence of life hasn’t left Nargis since. Recognizing visual arts to be one of the many ways of researching the world around us, Nargis is breaking the boundaries of the classical school of art, masterfully executing techniques in multiple mediums that are unified by one greater purpose – presenting an idea in her search for truth.

This exhibition shows new works produced in mixed mediums of drawings with embroidery and painting on canvas as well as photography and video installation, called «Sounds of Nomads, Decoding Messages of Beauty» from the series “The Path of Arabesque”. This series of works finds its inspiration in the ornamental structures of Arabesque and explores geometrical structures with easily recognizable Pythagorean-Platonic doctrines.

Fascinated by the beauty of the ornaments at first, Nargis has reflected on Plato’s philosophical approach and his call for “Decoding Messages of Beauty”. She came across research by contemporary mathematicians seeking an explanation for enigmatic structures. If one looks at Arabesque with the eyes of a mathematician, one will see 17 types of symmetries, operating in 3-dimensional space. These are perfect geometric structures, dynamic and flexible enough to expand endlessly in both directions to infinity. The structures are not limited, but directly connected to Platonic solids, one of which, tetrahedron, was considered by the Greeks to represent the very essence of matter.

Breaking down the ornaments and creating sequential drawings, Nargis illustrates how the art of Arabesque is inseparable from the science of mathematics.
The geometrical structures of Arabesque are based on timeless mathematics, one of the highly regarded disciplines in both Ancient Greece and the VIII century Middle East. Taking important cultural and philosophical notions from the two different cultures, Nargis questions the source of geometric figures behind the ornamentation through the evocation of Plato’s principles of geometry. Plato believed that geometry covered an eternal world of ideas and was a reflection of things that we glimpsed here on Earth. In his opinion, “geometrical figures are the ideal memories of the geometrical properties of ideal structures, which existed in some timeless realm that we can barely apprehend”.
Taking his view as the basis for her work, Nargis suggests that the primary function of these patterns is to lead the mind from the literal and mundane world towards the underlying permanent reality.
“I seek to address and to reveal the true complexity and significance of Arabesques geometry as well as its broad contemporary artistic and scientific relevance”, said the artist.
Being born to a family of an internationally acclaimed musicologist and one of the leading sculptors in the country, Nargis is staying true to her origins and questions not only the ornamental structures, but the source of geometry itself. Her video installation – “I am the Voice” generates a debate about the sources of geometry and brings a viewer to see simple geometrical structures created by a sound wave of the human voice, evoking Pythagoras “There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”
Nargis Rakhmanova doesn’t perceive visual art in isolation, but sees connections between philosophical schools, history, mathematics and music. Each are inseparable parts of one whole, which shine light on one another and enable us to understand our reality, through understanding them. Through her work, Nargis expands on her constant personal search for a source of reality and for realisation of its full potential.
The artist wishes to dedicate this exhibition to the memory of her nephew Elnur Rakhmanov.
Kazakh Museum of Folk Musical Instruments
Zenkov st. 24a, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Thank you for leaving your comfortable homes on that stormy, cold day in Berlin and showing up at my Open Studio event – “Past…Present”. It was a treat to see you all again and very interesting to hear your questions and to see your preferences. A very warm THANKS to all for your interest; it was an inspiring day and an inspiring start of the year!

“The Path of Arabesque” is the first exhibition in a new series by Almaty-born, Berlin-based artist, Nargis Rakhmanova-Dressler, who has been living and working in Almaty, New York City and Berlin. It spans the recent years of Nargis’ career, including works in mixed media, painting, embroidery on canvas and photography. To have multi-directional works present under one roof is perfectly indicative, not only of Nargis’ experimental approach to various media, but also of her work’s evolution in theory and perception. From a painting-based practice to a more conceptual interpretation of space and objects, “The Path of Arabesque” reflects a philosophical approach to questioning the source of geometrical structures and generating a debate about the meaning of their geometry.

The artist breaks down the geometrical structure into two: light, that pushes out the space creating lines – embroidered in gold; and space itself. To explore space the artist fills it with white color giving it a vivid presence and importance. Thinking of light as an independent building block, which separates space and creates shapes, Nargis explores it in her photos, showing the multi-dimensional and solitary character of light. Her camera helps to reveal dimensions, movements and unpredictable trajectories of light invisible to the human eye.

According to Nargis, entering the world of Arabesque is like entering the miraculous worlds of nature’s own matrix. One cannot help to see the harmony between the lines and the space as well as their endless combinations. Drawing on modern physics and thinking of the Arabesque as the work of energy – one comes to the conclusion that the lines communicate with the space, creating a set of geometrical order for each one of them, where the space and the lines are equal entities.

The Arabesque structures create geometrical order and where there is geometry, there is mathematical language, or information. “I believe that every Arabesque pattern contains mathematics that we are yet to understand,” – says the artist.

The artist wishes to dedicate this exhibition to the memory of her nephew Elnur Rakhmanov.

For further information please contact ART-SAMAL Gallery at +7(727) 2641444

2014 is the Year of the Horse according to the Chinese zodiac. The spirit of the horse is recognized to be the Chinese peoples’ ethos – making unremitting efforts to improve themselves. It is energetic, bright, warm-hearted, intelligent and able.

This year I’m happy to announce that I was just booked for my first solo show of the year. The opportunity came from my home town Almaty, Kazakhstan. It will be a mutual project with my father, internationally renowned artist and sculptor Vagif Rakhman, who will present his sculptures alongside my works in mixed media.

For those who are interested in checking out his works, please visit his website:

The show will take place in October. Please visit my website again to see the official press release from the gallery. There are a few more projects in the pipeline and there will be more news to be shared during this year.

In the meantime, many thanks to all of you for your support and your interest!